


The Enemy Within

by oubliance



Category: A Place of Greater Safety - Hilary Mantel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Academia, M/M, Neutrois Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oubliance/pseuds/oubliance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Margaret Thatcher dies. The Establishment response isn't everyone's cup of tea. A follow-up to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/734701">Free People</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Enemy Within

The demise of Dr Camille Desmoulins’ phone is blamed – by accessories before and after the fact – on that incomparably perilous liquid, college port. Not that the battered gadget in question met its end therein; mere water held that honour. ‘But we wouldn’t have been in the punt,’ Dr Danton explains to Dr Robespierre, ‘If not for Gabriel’s suggestion, so it was his fault. And he was right: an excellent year. And Camille’s phone wasn’t expensive. Didn’t merit Malmsey, I contend.’ 

‘Georges. He could have drowned.’

‘I fished him out straight away.’

‘He always refused to come to swimming,’ Robespierre says, his face creased with misery. ‘He’d vanish if they tried to make him. I still don’t know where he went.’ 

‘He’s fine. And he liked it – he only enjoys punting when he’s drunk.’ 

‘Yes, thank you. I remember.’ You will not afford me a tutorial on Camille’s preferences, Robespierre thinks. He pictures Camille at eleven, lying in the long grass with a strange, adult silence wrapped around him.

*

Danton gets to his feet and stretches, shivering. He is soaked too, of course. Catch Max offering Camille’s drowner a coffee, he thinks. Should have let Gabriel take him, shouldn’t I? But I brought him here: like clockwork, like always. Robespierre’s flat smells of Radox Sleep Easy and the Marmite from Camille’s uneaten toast.

‘Can I have this?’ Danton says. ‘I’m starving.’

‘What? Oh, yes.’ 

‘It’s gone cold.’

Robespierre hears his own apology and half-wishes he could weep. He forces himself to look away from the bedroom door, behind which Camille is presumably reposing, alive and well: that is to say, as well as he ever is.

*

‘What on earth was Gabriel thinking?’ Robespierre says suddenly. ‘It’s all very … a good year. Why not drink it in the SCR? It’s only April.’

‘The Spebbington Society. He wants to revive it.’

‘It was banned in 1965,’ Robespierre says. 'Professor Barstaple banned it.'

‘Well, Gabriel found a book in the archive. You know, traditions. Statutes. We were rehearsing. Punts feature heavily.’

‘For heaven’s sake.’

‘He said he’d buy Camille another phone.’

‘Camille’s insured, as it happens. I got him a policy with Endsleigh.’

Danton laughs. ‘Does he know about it?’

‘I told him. He might not remember.’

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t remind him. Doesn’t seem altogether kind.’

‘What? But of course – ’

‘I got the impression he was looking forward to it. Gabriel taking him shopping.’ Seeing Robespierre’s face, Danton is afflicted by a five-second jab of compunction.

Robespierre shrugs tightly. ‘If Gabriel wants to show off,’ he says, ‘That’s his prerogative, isn’t it?’

*

‘It might have been worse,’ Danton says. He bites into the second piece of toast, which is limp, damp, unhappy. What prompts Max to make such heavy weather of things? Let Gabriel present an iPhone, make Camille feel dazzled and spoilt, give him a happy day. No harm in that, Danton tells himself, suddenly deciding to exact an infinitesimal revenge from his colleague.

‘Demurest of the Oxford kind, the pensive Camilla, reclined,’ he begins. Doing it extempore: now, that’s a gift. 

‘How you can joke about it,’ Robespierre says. His voice is low: almost without annoyance, but instead of rinsing Danton’s crumb-spattered plate, he slides it straight into the dishwasher. Impossible to banish the image of Camille’s hands clutching at slippery weeds beneath the spring surges. And moments later, what? 

Oh, he imagines I wouldn’t bother myself, Danton thinks, if Camille drowned. As though he’s the only one – 

And in the face of such ignorance, he gives up and begins to look for his coat, one of nine or ten donated garments in which Camille was wrapped at the time of their arrival _chez Robespierre_. It’s sifted to the bottom of the pile: a large coat, once nice. But in Max’s sitting-room, Danton thinks, it looks like Caliban’s fucking gabardine, doesn’t it?

He can’t find the words for a goodbye, and wonders for a moment if this is how Camille always feels.

*

‘It’s pretty,’ Camille says. ‘Does it record videos?’

‘Of course.’ The man’s name-badge reads: Geoffrey. His eyes are bright blue, perhaps coloured contacts.

‘Will you show me, Geoffrey?’ Camille says. It’s his twelfth phone – they don’t seem to last long – but undoubtedly the most expensive.

Professor Mirabeau takes his arm. ‘Don’t worry, Camille. I’ll teach you its ways. You can pretend to be a fresher again; that’s the last time I taught you anything.’ 

Camille looks up at him for an extended moment. True enough, he supposes: though none of the lessons proved contiguous with the reading list for Mods. 

He smiles carefully. ‘Gabriel,’ he says. ‘Can I choose a case?’

*

When Camille’s new phone sings illicitly into the papered silence of Duke Humfrey’s, he touches the screen and waits – _comme d’habitude_ – for the other person to speak. Friends have learnt to expect this: callers who do not anticipate the initial void are, as a rule, those with whom Camille does not wish to embark upon the delicate business of conversation.

Heads turn: some of them, recognising him, relinquish at once the idea of protest. The hushing of four or five strangers becomes superfluous as the phone slides from Camille’s nerveless hands onto the floor. 

‘She’s dead,’ Camille says, astonishing himself with the words’ clarity. ‘Thatcher is dead.’ 

Duke Humfrey’s inhabitants have left their laptops at home. Pencils bristle in their hands: it might be thirty years ago, or forty. Except for the news. The whole room stirs, and several voices begin to ask questions, but Camille hears none of them. 

He leaves the desk, he leaves the room: without returning his books, he goes out into the furious spring light.

*

‘I’ll set myself on fire,’ Camille says, ‘If they give her a state funeral. I'll do it in Trafalgar Square. I'll order petrol on the internet – I think you can do that, now.’

‘Camille,’ Danton’s face is patient, unfamiliar. ‘Work. I need to do some. The REF marcheth on, state funeral or not.’ He stretches, plucks two volumes of _Classical Philology_ from the shelf behind his desk.

Musculature, Camille thinks. How could Georges pull me from the river-bottom, and be bored by this? Camille's in no doubt as to which is more exciting. Stumbling over the words, he says, ‘Something must be done. I mean – we must do something. Have you seen the BBC website?’

‘She’s dead. You’re a bit late.’

‘Don’t. I mean, don’t say. This ‘respect’ business. I can't bear to look at the Telegraph. I’m going to be sick.’ 

Danton, looking up hurriedly, discerns that the phrase is rhetorical. 

‘Section Twenty-Eight. And the miners.’ 

‘And the milk,’ Danton says absently.

‘What?’

‘The milk. Milk-snatcher.’

‘I don’t care about the fucking milk,’ Camille snaps, and Danton thinks: soon he will cry. It’s strange, discovering that Camille minds so much.

*

Camille says, ‘What is this?’

‘Vanilla spice latte.’

‘I wanted black.’

‘I meant it to be a surprise,’ Robespierre says sadly, trusting in his long acquaintance with Camille’s weak points.

Camille takes one resentful sip. He wears a dress of dull green silk and looks as though he ought to be in a Burne-Jones painting. 

‘Whose is that?’ Robespierre says.

‘Mine, now. Lucile gave it to me. She’s gone to get a charger for this.’ He holds up the phone, conveyed back to him by the kindnesses of a dozen strangers. 

The SCR curtains are drawn against the spring evening, and Robespierre wonders what Camille and Lucile have been doing. He’s been present at a dozen ethics hearings: every frightened plagiarist wants him there. I must have some sort of reputation, he thinks. But all that practice hasn’t impinged on Camille’s exemption – the liberal mind’s gift, he tells himself. Because I know he would never mean to hurt anyone. 

It’s best not to look closely, and as a rule he manages very well.

*

Camille lies on a sofa: pooled with green, his hair straying across the striped silk cushions. It is hard to look at him, Lucile finds. She can see that Dr Robespierre’s eyes are averted too.

‘The Falklands,’ Camille says. ‘Don’t pretend not to care – ’

‘I care, Camille,’ Robespierre says. ‘But you were a child, when she was in power. Come on. Breathe slowly.’

‘The hunger strikes.’

Lucile sits on the floor by the sofa, digs a tissue out of her satchel and tucks it into his hand.

‘Lolotte,’ he says. ‘Will you turn on the television, please? We should know the worst.’ 

He keeps his eyes closed. They’re only words, syllables: and yet he understands better than anyone that words are both our servants and our masters. Legacy, he thinks, blotting his temples, picturing faces in the streets and ragged dogs. The men of Chelsea are almost ninety when they’re whisked into a pink-lit chapel of rest – but in Lewisham, ah, there! Traditional, old hat; do not pass go, not again: that's your lot. Three-score years and ten, on the nose. 

It seems much too long, but he’s never trusted himself and never will. He rather likes funerals, as long as he doesn’t know the person and nobody expects him to listen to the service. Women’s clothes are more interesting than usual; nobody minds if you cry at the music. He calls up Henriette’s waxy face from its place inside his mind. 

‘I’m tired,’ he says, ‘Of it being like this.’ They aren’t listening for such a low whisper, and the words go unremarked.

*

He recognises all the voices on the BBC. Cameron. Osborne. Cameron again. Clegg, ill at ease. Osborne again: a man who doesn’t deserve his Christian name, in Camille’s opinion.

Camille is superbly accomplished at not listening, but today his skills have failed him. They went away as soon as the phone rang, and he thinks: I might have to drown this one, too. On purpose, this time.

The Chancellor’s voice hums on through its theme of sadness: then pride, and then ambition. One word stands out for Camille, louder than the others. Progress. Progress. He sits up, flicking hair away from his face and feeling Max’s eyes, Lucile’s eyes, as they alight on him. 

Camille pulls the dress around his body as if he is cold or frightened, and says softly, ‘I’m going to take his head off. Yes, him. This can’t go on, can it?’ 

He doesn’t wait for an answer, for eye contact, for his phone, for the end of the news. Camille, who is always leaving, leaves once more. Green trails behind him, half-visible in the Oxford dusk.

*

_We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty._  


\- Margaret Thatcher

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction and not intended as a threat against any real public figure. 
> 
> (Yes, reason #20393 why I am not Camille.)  
> [](http://www.tracemyip.org/)  
> 


End file.
